John Ruskin Quotes
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One who does not know when to die, does not know how to live.
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Modern education has devoted itself to the teaching of impudence, and then we complain that we can no longer control our mobs.
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Natural abilities can almost compensate for the want of every kind of cultivation, but no cultivation of the mind can make up for the want of natural abilities.
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The question is not what man can scorn, or disparage, or find fault with, but what he can love, and value, and appreciate.
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In order that people may be happy in their work, these three things are needed: They must be fit for it. They must not do too much of it. And they must have a sense of success in it.
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Government and cooperation are in all things the laws of life. Anarchy and competition, the laws of death.
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Your honesty is not to be based either on religion or policy. Both your religion and policy must be based on it. Your honesty must be based, as the sun is, in vacant heaven; poised, as the lights in the firmament, which have rule over the day and over the night.
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Failure is less attributable to either insufficiency of means or impatience of labours than to a confused understanding of the thing actually to be done.
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The world is full of vulgar Purists, who bring discredit on all selection by the silliness of their choice; and this the more, because the very becoming a Purist is commonly indicative of some slight degree of weakness, readiness to be offended, or narrowness of understanding of the ends of things.
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I have always found that the less we speak of our intentions, the more chance there is of our realizing them.
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Why is one man richer than another? Because he is more industrious, more persevering and more sagacious.
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Give an earnest-hearted, devoted girl any true work that will make her active in the dawn, and weary at night, with the consciousness that her fellow-creatures have indeed been the better for her day, and the powerless sorrow of her enthusiasm will transform itself into a majesty of radiant and beneficent peace.
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The repose necessary to all beauty is repose, not of inanition, nor of luxury, nor of irresolution, but the repose of magnificent energy and being; in action, the calmness of trust and determination; in rest, the consciousness of duty accomplished and of victory won; and this repose and this felicity can take place as well in the midst of trial and tempest, as beside the waters of comfort.
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Your art is to be the praise of something that you love. It may only be the praise of a shell or a stone.
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Levi's station in life was the receipt of custom; and Peter's, the shore of Galilee; and Paul's, the antechambers of the High- Priest,- which 'station in life' each had to leave, with brief notice.
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A nation which lives a pastoral and innocent life never decorates the shepherd's staff or the plough-handle; but races who live by depredation and slaughter nearly always bestow exquisite ornaments on the quiver, the helmet, and the spear.
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Milton saw not, and Beethoven heard not, but the sense of beauty was upon them, and they fain must speak.
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Great art is precisely that which never was, nor will be taught, it is preeminently and finally the expression of the spirits of great men.
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It's unwise to pay too much, but it's worse to pay too little. When you pay too much, you lose a little money - that's all. When you pay too little, you sometimes lose everything, because the thing you bought was incapable of doing the thing it was bought to do. The common law of business balance prohibits paying a little and getting a lot - it can't be done. If you deal with the lowest bidder, it is well to add something for the risk you run, and if you do that you will have enough to pay for something better.
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Everything that you can see in the world around you presents itself to your eyes only as an arrangement of patches of different colors.
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The essence of lying is in deception, not in words.
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Repose demands for its expression the implied capability of its opposite,--energy.
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A great thing can only be done by a great person; and they do it without effort.
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You must get into the habit of looking intensely at words, and assuring yourself of their meaning, syllable by syllable-nay, letter by letter... you might read all the books in the British Museum (if you could live long enough) and remain an utterly "illiterate," undeducated person; but if you read ten pages of a good book, letter by letter, - that is to say, with real accuracy- you are for evermore in some measure an educated person.